Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow

There is a trend in memoirs where the author loses their mother at an early age, and this one does not buck that trend. The author spends this whole memoir struggling to comprehend her mother’s death in 2004 and finds herself often rushing to glimpse her memorial. She considers herself unique in a traditional Chinese family that refused to openly grieve in that she admits it is still hard--that in and of itself tells you a lot about what you need to know. As a tribute, she vibrantly tells the story of her mother’s life with great dexterity and in luminous detail. Her mother was born in China, then immigrated to America to attend college and ended up charming her father at a tag sale, which led to a problematic marriage riddled with bickering, unrest, and money problems. Honoring her family’s ghosts, the author also writes movingly about the crushing death of her brother just an hour after his premature birth, the steady decline of her mother’s health as cancer ravaged her, and how the early deaths of the women in her family gives her both pause and cause for concern. Her mother hid internal aches she blamed on age but were later revealed as symptoms of her terminal disease. There is levity braided into the memories, as well: Chow’s mother telling her, at age 9, that she wanted to be stuffed after her death so she could keep an eye on them (which is just creepy in retrospect), fun family road trips, and her mother’s penchant for practical jokes. By uniting family memories, elements of Chinese culture, and an intimate perspective, Chow wraps tragedy and history into an affecting memorial.